30 August 2007

That Kid flipped His Bike!

Yesterday I was riding in the truck with Chad, coming back from a shopping excursion and a guy on a bike darted through the intersection right before we were about to turn right, narrowly zipping right by the front fender of the truck. All well and good aside from his nearly impended doom right? As the knucklehead neared the curb on the other side he didn't slow down in the slightest and at the last moment he popped up on his bike to lift the wheels up onto the curb.

Well, he didn't quite make it :-) His front wheel hit the curb with a satisfying thud, and then up and over he went, tumbling a full somersault over his handlebars, landing on his shoulders with the bike plopping down right on top of him. He popped up with an embarrassed grin on his face and looked around to see if anyone had witnessed this feat of awesome failure to jump the curb. That's when he saw us, the guys he had just cut off, stopped on the road a few feet behind him, grinning and giving him a mocking thumbs up, and generally enjoying his hilarious misfortune. Rather than getting angry, he smiled back, laughed, and hopped back on his bike.

Perhaps we could have been a little more courteous in exposing his shame, but I think through the whole thing, we made a new and unnamed friend. I was thinking later and I realized, thats just a great way to go about life. Every situation has a bright side, thank God for this new laughter, thank God the joke's on me. Lord, give us laughter to help us through the junk yards... and also, cool junk gadgets. Amen.